What should we expect [during presidential election in Russia]? […] I mean the murder of one of the presidential candidates. Therefore, I would like to ask Russian authorities to protect these people as much as possible. They are really threatened!.One of the weakest critics, I mean. For example, Yavlinskiy, Sobchak and so on. [—] And who is doing this? Not simply Americans. This is being done by a specific consortium of intelligence services, which have escaped the control of the people of the United States, and which are doing it independently.
Summary
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia, which was known as the Soviet Union or Soviet Russia abroad, lost 23.8 percent of its national territory, 48.5 percent of its population, 41 of the GDP, 39.4 percent of its industrial potential (nearly half of our potential, I would underscore), as well as 44.6 percent of its military capability due to the division of the Soviet Armed Forces among the former Soviet republics.
Disproof
Fourteen former Soviet republics are unlikely to agree with these claims: during the period of the Soviet Union, all these resources belonged both to Russia and these nations, which all are independent states now. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on December 25, and all Soviet institutions ceased to function at the end of 1991. According to Britannica, the main benefactor was Russia. It assumed the U.S.S.R.’s seat on the UN Security Council, and all Soviet embassies became Russian embassies. The Soviet armed forces were placed under CIS command, but it was only a matter of time before each successor state formed its own armed forces. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan became nuclear powers, but all, except Russia, declared their goal to be the destruction of their nuclear arms.